still Not Writing
Jan. 5th, 2011 01:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzfishI have writing-related Goals for the year: have two stories in final form, and another two in completed first drafts. I even have secondary goals: have those two stories out for submission somewhere, keep posting at least thrice per week, apply to (and, ideally, attend) Viable Paradise, and generally develop the habit of writing fiction until my brain accepts that this is something I do.
What I don't have is a plan for moving from 'goal' to 'accomplishment.'
It was (comparatively) easy to write for Nano because I had a Deadline and a Project. In a couple of weeks it'll be (comparatively) easy to bash the space story into shape because I'm committed to resubmitting it for a CVS critique the first week of February. Big deadlines are easy. What I want are small deadlines, the kind I can meet every week.
I'd hoped that CVS [writers' group] would provide some of those. At the beginning of each meeting we go around and talk a little about whether we made our personal writing goals for the past week, and each set a new goal for the coming week. For awhile that got me putting in one decent night a week of writing, so that I could make my CVS goal. The trouble is that most of the other members don't take it seriously. (Arguably they aren't taking their writing seriously either.) That's infectious, and actively unhelpful.
During the summer I tried to start a similar thing, where my partner and I got to brag once a week about what we'd done towards making something cool and creative. For a wide variety of reasons, she turned out to be uninterested in that, so it fizzled as well.
In pursuit of awesome is worth reading on its own, but what caught my eye was the almost-throwaway line, "I think, if you want to do something, you need a circle of people in your life who do things." I'm realising more and more that that's something that would be incredibly helpful to me. The corollary, of course, being that if I Do Things myself I'll (in theory) attract other people who Do Things. Bootstrap problem.
Short-term solution: in January I'm going to finish revising the space story for a second pass through CVS.
Medium-term solution: When I submit the space story again I'm also going to determine whether the pending new year overhauls have changed anything about the group and whether it's being helpful to me. If not, I'll find Something Else. Somehow.
Long-term solution... I dunno. Maybe "This month I will X" will be enough.
What I don't have is a plan for moving from 'goal' to 'accomplishment.'
It was (comparatively) easy to write for Nano because I had a Deadline and a Project. In a couple of weeks it'll be (comparatively) easy to bash the space story into shape because I'm committed to resubmitting it for a CVS critique the first week of February. Big deadlines are easy. What I want are small deadlines, the kind I can meet every week.
I'd hoped that CVS [writers' group] would provide some of those. At the beginning of each meeting we go around and talk a little about whether we made our personal writing goals for the past week, and each set a new goal for the coming week. For awhile that got me putting in one decent night a week of writing, so that I could make my CVS goal. The trouble is that most of the other members don't take it seriously. (Arguably they aren't taking their writing seriously either.) That's infectious, and actively unhelpful.
During the summer I tried to start a similar thing, where my partner and I got to brag once a week about what we'd done towards making something cool and creative. For a wide variety of reasons, she turned out to be uninterested in that, so it fizzled as well.
In pursuit of awesome is worth reading on its own, but what caught my eye was the almost-throwaway line, "I think, if you want to do something, you need a circle of people in your life who do things." I'm realising more and more that that's something that would be incredibly helpful to me. The corollary, of course, being that if I Do Things myself I'll (in theory) attract other people who Do Things. Bootstrap problem.
Short-term solution: in January I'm going to finish revising the space story for a second pass through CVS.
Medium-term solution: When I submit the space story again I'm also going to determine whether the pending new year overhauls have changed anything about the group and whether it's being helpful to me. If not, I'll find Something Else. Somehow.
Long-term solution... I dunno. Maybe "This month I will X" will be enough.
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Date: 2011-01-05 09:47 pm (UTC)My deadline-for-myself is to scrape up a Viable Paradise application to be in by the end of this month (they say "submitting early does help")... would you be interested/willing to look over a cover letter for that, should I ever pull the teeth necessary to write one? (I hate-hate-hate that sort of formal writing of any sort ever, ugh...)
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Date: 2011-01-05 11:07 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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